When no one is looking
by witchfingers
Summary: As he comes closer he sees the gothic letters that grimly announce 'Skulk & Lurk'. That is what Danny does when no one is looking. [slight DxS]


_Butch Hartman owns Danny Phantom. I don't think I even own my penname, so... hehe n.nU_

**When no one is looking.

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Danny sneaks his head out of his room and checks carefully no one's still up as he changes into the Phantom. He goes intangible and floats through Jazz's room- she's sound asleep with Bearbert tucked under her arm. He floats through his parents' room and they're sound asleep as well, Jack taking up most of the bed as he snores soundly.

He nods to himself and flies out of the house, and lands on the street that is deserted at such an advanced hour. His face is blank as he stares up at a lightpost, an exact replica of the one in the other corner. And he remebers he's fogotten something. He goes back to his room, and from between the mattress and the bed he snatches a thin notebook.

Silently, he lands again on the cold pavement. The city at night always looks abandoned and lonely. He secures the notebook between his arm and himself and changes back to Danny Fenton, then he begins to walk without haste. He's switched his white t-shirt for a black one and he's added a chain to his jeans' pocket, and he carries no backpack. A cop in a corner looks about to doze off, but he never stops people wearing what he is wearing when it's so late, even if it's so late. Because it's ordinary- the goth community of Amity Park is notoriously large, because of a very obvious reason. And even if Danny isn't precisely dressed as a goth, in the last instance, what does the cop know? What could _anybody_ know? No one stops to look long enough to notice. Danny smiles softly at the thought.

A block after a block, he's done that so many times but he doesn't exactly know how far away he's from home. Then gradually after he turns in a corner he sees his destination dimly lit, the placard that bears the name neatly painted a lugubrious purple. As he comes closer he sees the gothic letters that grimly announce '_Skulk & Lurk_'

That is what he does when no one is looking.

There is only one person standing in the entrance. Seeing Danny's small build and apathetic expression he lets him pass, and Danny can't help but smile. That stray look isn't hard to fake at all, but it always works wonders on the goons aposted at the entrance, those who don't allow preps or posers in.

He knows he can't go as the Phantom, because everyone knows him, and there are always those idiots that can tag him as hypocritical.

So instead he goes as himself, Danny Fenton, the shy kid no one's ever heard of. In the beginning it was all Sam's fault.

She dragged him and Tucker one night against their will, and Danny watched, fascinated, how a single piece of poetry could reveal so much of someone's insides. And since then he's snook out of his home at unlikely times, at first to listen, and then, to be listened. His poetry isn't anything grand or touching, but however, he can proudly say it has improved a lot since the first time he read.

He sits alone in a dark wooden table, and he places the notebook on it, opening it in page 15; poem 32: Reality and Fantasy. He sneaks a peek at the stage, where an androgynous-looking Goth is mouthing, in a low, depressive tone, something like;

_  
...remember my sad name, my medieval muse,  
though my love was so petty, so futile , so scarce._

Danny isn't the guy for those kinds of poems. Roses, moonlight, Middle Ages, death. That's already written, that's not what Danny has to say about himself. When the stage is emptied and no one seems to be next, Danny stands up and walks among the tables, until he's standing before the mic, and before the gloomy audience. The initial nervousness always resurfaces at this moment, when he pulls the paper sheet in front of him and, adjusting the languid microphone, he reads slowly, in a barely melodic voice;

_Cut their flesh, the poet tells with his blood.  
This soul takes me by the hand on a journey too far away._

_Hold me in the moonlit night which echoes with the gaita,  
tempting the men who've been tamed._

_Until my blood dries out,  
everything reflects on my eyes, reality and fantasy alike._

_I put my words to the wind which passes the sea and the hills,  
this is my proof._

_Until my blood dries out I'll sing,  
everything reflects in these eyes, reality and fantasy alike._

He finishes and they clap. They clap a lot, they always do, because Danny's poetry isn't good or bad, it's just different, and those present in _Skulk & Lurk_ value the unique persons as the greatest, Danny's found out. Lilac eyes follow him as he walks down the stairs, smiling sheepishly and adverting his eyes from those who're still clapping at him.

When he's seated again he's shocked to see Sam climbing the five steps to the stage. She's obviously seen him, but he's promised himself no one will ever know about his... he gulps... his secret. His _another_ secret. Danny's blue eyes follow Sam as she grabs the mic, and recites, simply,

_Everything is wrong.  
...or is it that I'm not right?  
Everyone's happily taking about love._

And she waits until the clapping is done to go down the stage. Danny adverts his eyes. He closes his notebook and waits, one more poem and he'll leave. He's always come to recite at ridiculously late hours, exactly to avoid _these_ kind of encounters. But he thinks with a small smile that he won't escape from her- if it isn't tonight she'll get to him tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. He just knows she will.

"So," a very well-known voice says behind him, and two thin hands sneak behind him and cover his eyes. Sam goes on saying, sarcasm dripping as she speaks, "This is what you do when no one is looking, huh?"

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The poetry Danny wrote is really the translation of the song 'Shinjitsu to Gensou to' (_Reality and Fantasy_), and the one Sam reads is from "Sai wa Nagerareta" (_The Die is Cast_), both by L'ArcenCiel.

**I wrote the one the Goth person read... was it depressive enough for a Skulk & Lurk's habitué? n.nU This is how it was originally: (I cut it because it was irrelevant to the plot)**

_When the moon rises fully over a withered rose;  
and my corpse shines quietly with the light of the stars,  
remember my sad name, my medieval muse,  
though my love was so petty, so futile , so scarce._

_**Dark enough?**_

**R&R!**


End file.
